White noise

This morning is all mine
whole and uncut
In a spring cleaned kitchen
I'm trying to arrange the alphabet soup of
ephemeral phrases and shattered sentences
that have been cutting through the static
until my head feels like a badly tuned radio

This should be the kind of moment one longs for
when the day is dark and the heart is dirty
like the moment from a butter-yellow past
when the sun-lit steam of assam and ceylon
rises in curls, fragrant as jasmine
Scribing hennaed words across vanilla walls

But those moments exist only in forlorn longing
or mistaken memories, for now, the page has nothing to say
The barren walls fold around me like a puzzle box
not opening, but closing, sliding softly closer
The venetian blind morphs into bars, measuring time
Until a primrose sun peeks around the doorjamb
like a shy new friend, come to ask me out to play

As the spade turns the sun-rayed soil
It feels like I'm unearthing my heart
A robin cocks an eye, spying for treasure
I'm digging just for him now

Later, fingers rimmed with black like a new fashion
fused vertebrae cracking; arching into the hearth rug
I focus on the sugar-paste ceiling, wondering how
each perfect scalloped swirl could ever be man-made
but, of course, only nature can get away with imperfection

Brian Cox is whispering in my ear; explaining the cosmos
How the universe contains billions of galaxies
and how each galaxy contains billions of stars
How order alway wants to return to chaos
and that the sun will die
I cannot think how to begin